AUTHORITY. 89 



medicine and surgery./ Nothing was at the fingers' ends 

 of doctors that was not found in the tomes of those two 

 ancient worthies, if we except " the dust and cobwebs of 

 scholastic theories that had collected on their surface in 

 the lapse of time. There were indeed other writers whom 

 physicians studied, Oribasius, Aetius, Paulus ^Egineta; 

 among the Arabs, Avicenna, and Averroes, Rhases, and 

 others. But these, so far as they were trustworthy, were 

 little more than cups filled from the pure spring of Hip- 

 pocrates, or the broad pool of Galen. As for the Romans, 

 they had no physicians of their own worth following. 

 Celsus was only useful and in that sense very useful 

 to physicians of Europe in ' the sixteenth century, as a 

 repertory of medical Latin, which enabled them to write 

 their treatises correctly, and apply to diseases and re- 

 medies of which they read in Greek, the proper Latin 

 names in their own volumes. 



It was in the lifetime of Cardan that the sap began to 

 find its way into the barren stems of many sciences. The 

 spirit of inquiry that begot the reformation was apparent 

 also in the fields and woods, and by the sick beds of the 

 people. Out of the midst of the inert mass of philo- 

 sophers that formed the Catholic majority in science, 

 there came not a small number of independent men who 

 boldly scrutinised the wisdom of the past, and diligently 

 sought new indications for the future. Cardan was one 



